Beneath the Peak

Staging a dress rehearsal, where fellow employees play the role of journalists, is a good way to prepare for a major news conference. Pretending the rehearsal is a real news conference isn’t such a good idea, as the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has discovered.

The incident has provoked an unusually clear statement from a senior bureaucrat:

“I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I’ve seen since I’ve been in government,” Michael Chertoff [head of U.S. Homeland Security] said.

“I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment,” he added.

What is truly astonishing is that FEMA was dumb enough to believe they could get away with it, especially after the scrutiny that followed their performance during Hurricane Katrina.

According to PRNewser, FEMA’s director of external affairs, John Philbin, has accepted an opportunity at another government agency.